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Painting a pair of pheasants — one male, one female — against a landscape backdrop is a compositional approach found not only in Korea but frequently in China as well, and is attested in the work of court painters of the Ming dynasty Zhe School tradition, represented by such masters as Lü Ji (呂紀) and Lin Liang (林良). The Gushi Huapu (顧氏畵譜) also includes a painting by Huang Quan (黃筌), and from the mid-Chosŏn period onward — as Chinese Zhe School pictorial conventions and painting manuals made their way into Korea — the subject would have been a thoroughly familiar one. It is worth noting, however, that the pheasant is a bird commonly encountered throughout the Korean peninsula, and it is quite possible that it was depicted in painting even before this period of cultural exchange.
In terms of surviving works, the traceable tradition begins in the late Chosŏn period, and more specifically from the time of Kim Hong-do onward. While the compositional formula of depicting a pair of pheasants in a landscape setting ultimately derives from Chinese precedent, the subject as treated by Kim Hong-do and those who followed him appears to have become increasingly expressive of a distinctly Korean sensibility and affection for the natural world. In Kim Hong-do's paired pheasant paintings, plum blossom, bamboo, or pine are frequently included as accompanying motifs; the present work similarly incorporates plum and bamboo. The somewhat rough and dry quality of the brushwork and the angular treatment of the rocks point to the artist's late period. Observations by Son Chae-hyŏng (孫在馨), known by the sobriquet Sojŏn (素荃), are inscribed to the left and right of the composition.
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